Last week I considered how best to personify Rio de Janeiro. Can it, or she, be “a damsel in distress”, as suggested by my friend, Jorge, who goes on to explain that any risk taken in saving her is usually rewarded? So where does that leave Brasília, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year? It was only last month that the Governor of Brasília, José Roberto Arruda, was filmed in the act of taking a $28000 bribe, which he subsequently claimed was a charitable contribution to be used to…
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Added by Simon Lane on January 10, 2010 at 5:00pm —
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Next month will make it nine years since I settled in Rio de Janeiro. How to explain this place, the “cidade maravilhosa”, other than to say it is one great, heaving mass of contradictions? It might have been first glimpsed by the white man in the month of January (1502) but a river (“rio”) it ain’t: it’s a bay, dude. According to today’s “O Globo”, Rio now registers 36 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants – actually down by 14.4% over a twelve-month period – but two million of us just celebrated a…
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Added by Simon Lane on January 3, 2010 at 10:30pm —
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The big news story in Brazil this week - as evidenced by a fellow writer on this site - was the row over who should have custody of a nine-year old boy called Sean Goldman. Sean’s mother died earlier this year and Sean continued to live in Rio with his step-father and family, separated from his biological father, David Goldman, right up to Christmas Eve, when père et fils were reunited, put on a jet hired by NBC and flown back home to New Jersey. So why all the fuss? The stepfather is a powerful…
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Added by Simon Lane on December 27, 2009 at 4:00pm —
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I was reading the papers yesterday morning over breakfast. The news seemed familiar, very familiar, perhaps too familiar to be true. And then I realized: they were the papers from the day before. Today’s papers seem no different, so how to explain this feeling of déjà vu, other than to conclude that it is not déjà vu at all, just life, politics, the whole human comedy repeating itself? It’s like the movie “Groundhog Day”, in which the same day comes around again, and again, obliging the hapless…
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Added by Simon Lane on December 20, 2009 at 3:30pm —
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I am in Paris. Being France-Brazil Year I’ve come over from Rio once again to see how the other half lives. It’s “la rentrée,” which means everyone has a suntan and appears fully fit and rested for a couple of days, until reality sets in once again and the smiles become somewhat forced. Recession? Not here. The hotels, restaurants and cafés are full and will remain so as the city enjoys the conference and fashion show season. Paris is a world unto itself, within the periphérique, that is. Beyond…
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Added by Simon Lane on September 9, 2009 at 8:30am —
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The news regarding German federal elections doesn't usually jump off the page first thing in the morning – well, not since 1933 - but at long last there’s something to make you inadvertently dunk your croissant into the ashtray: a party with a platform. They’re called, simply enough, Die Partei, and they’ve worked out how to get Deutschland back on her feet using a previously unknown weapon: humour. The first idea is so glaringly obvious one wonders why no one came up with it before: REBUILD THE…
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Added by Simon Lane on August 28, 2009 at 1:00am —
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Remember the English round-the-world, insurance-fraudster-babes? The law grads, Shanti and Rebecca? You are forgiven. Well, they pleaded guilty and received sentence today. They didn’t pass GO and they didn’t get the insurance money for the laptop, iphone and other stuff they claimed were stolen from them on a bus from Foz do Iguaçu to Rio last month. Instead they got a sixteen month prison sentence with one “semi-open” month added for good measure. But, may they thank the Jesus, porridge was re…
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Added by Simon Lane on August 20, 2009 at 1:00am —
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Big story. No scoop. But big. It’s been doing the rounds for a while but it got picked up by the BBC so it must be true. My take: “TV Crime Show Host Stages Hits to Boost ratings.” Or how about: “Local MP-cum-TV-Crimewatch Host Jumps Gun by Sending Film Crew to Crime Scene Seconds After Disposing of Competitors”? Nah. Too mid-Atlantic by half. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in the old country, does it? Why not just give the facts, if there are any? Wallace Souza, state legislator in Mana…
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Added by Simon Lane on August 13, 2009 at 5:00am —
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Finally, they are on their way home to England! What a relief! After so much anxiety and heartbreak! So the English post-grad-fraudster-babes have been released from these cruel shores? Not exactly. They’re in a hotel in Copacabana awaiting trial. I’m talking about those restless tons of rubbish. The good ship MSC Oriane set sail from the port of Santos, São Paulo, at 14h00 today, Wednesday, taking with it 81 containers, 1477 tons to be precise, of the toxic waste that originally arrived here fr…
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Added by Simon Lane on August 6, 2009 at 4:00am —
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It’s stopped raining. And I had to have a swine ‘flu test. So what’s going on out there, in there? Leading intellectuals of the world seem to dislike Internet – Chico Buarque, the most respected lyricist/pop singer in Brazil, complained recently that Google is “for those who lack imagination” – but at least while people are stuck at home they are not spreading germs while continuing to keep themselves up to date with the latest … rubbish! A quick overview: Shanti and Rebecca, our two, post-grad-…
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Added by Simon Lane on August 2, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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“Two 23-year old English girls (women?) reported being robbed on Sunday here in Rio. Not exactly headline news except they were lying...” I started writing this story yesterday and was obliged to stop, thankfully, as I was asked to do a follow up on the rubbish story (toxic waste illegally imported from the UK). Well, sorry to be cruel, but now I realize there is no end to British rubbish in sight I must continue, if only to make a living. These two babes, law graduates from Sussex University, h…
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Added by Simon Lane on July 30, 2009 at 12:30am —
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Everyone wants to know what’s happening to the 1 600 tons of toxic waste illegally imported from the UK into Brazil recently. Well, it’s all going back to the old country so get your masks on if they’re any left down at Boots. In fact, no less than 41 containers were sealed by IBAMA (Brazil’s Eco-cops) last week and should be on their way, if not now, then, er, shortly. The story, according to the laws of disproportionate tragedy, seems to have disappeared from the Brazilian press today – in vai…
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Added by Simon Lane on July 28, 2009 at 7:30pm —
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A winter Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. Yes, we have seasons here: the leaves don’t fall off the trees but we get spring, summer, autumn and winter just like everyone else. At this time of year, the temperature can fall a bit and we are all getting colds. It seems we’re also getting rubbish, loads of it; from England, of all places. The BBC reports that Brazilian authorities are trying to return 1 400 tonnes of toxic waste, around 90 shipping containers, to Felixstowe, that were delivered to Santos,…
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Added by Simon Lane on July 20, 2009 at 3:00am —
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I just spent a few days on a farm two hours from Rio. The farmer keeps Mangalarga horses and Nilore cattle from India. There is a school and a medical centre on the property along with a small church consecrated a few years ago just beside them, all built by the farmer. Buses collect members of the wider community and bring them back and forth for studies or treatment or Mass. Thirty years ago, the land was barren and used up from coffee exploitation and the locals were in a bad way, shoeless, a…
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Added by Simon Lane on July 12, 2009 at 6:00am —
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It’s not very complicated. Just Google: Bubbles/Jackson/lives/in/Florida and it’s right there, the missing link, fresh from the SunSentinel. It seems when Bubbles got too big to handle in 2005, he spent a bit of quality time with Michael Jackson’s animal trainer in California before moving involuntarily to The Sunshine State. The article explains that the trainer “retired from the business of working chimpanzees and orangutans in the entertainment industry and sent all his apes, including Bubble…
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Added by Simon Lane on July 2, 2009 at 5:00am —
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Michael Jackson, man/child, dead to the world and reincarnated as myth. Talk about a new lease of life! I don’t think people ever really change much after childhood; by the time Michael Jackson had reached eleven years old he had all the composure and self-assurance required to dominate the stage. As we all know, his appearance and behaviour changed but he still carried himself, however weirdly, with that unchecked, indefinable aura of celebrity, nobility even. A Prince, a King … of Pop! Those s…
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Added by Simon Lane on June 27, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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I am back in Rio, unpacked once again. I’m travelling more these days. I realize I have been spending too much time tapping ideas with my fingers rather than getting them free and fresh from the world around me. Free ‘n Fresh. Sounds like a Soviet Egg Distribution Plant. I haven’t actually been to Russia yet, but hope to get there in September. I bought a guidebook on St. Petersburg, it’s all white and gold and shiny. Gold ‘n Shiny? Definitely worth the outing. I also plan on going to Moscow for…
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Added by Simon Lane on June 22, 2009 at 4:18pm —
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It is now Monday in Rio, just after midnight. The sea and the traffic make the same noise from where I tap the keys, remembering. Once, at the airport here on my way to Paris, I was asked to turn out my pockets. This was pre-9/11. “What’s this?” asked the x-ray man. “A pen,” I replied. And it was too: a heavy-weighted, hexagonal, Rotring fountain pen I find useful for scribbling on paper, card, even wood if desperate. “Looks like an offensive weapon.” I couldn’t resist the obvious answer, before…
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Added by Simon Lane on June 8, 2009 at 4:57am —
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AF447 has been on everyone’s mind this week. The Paris-bound Airbus went off the radar, non-metaphorically speaking, last Sunday night, having made – according to today's update, six days later – no less than 24 automatically transmitted alerts via its computers in the four minutes leading to its disappearance. So what happened? I know one thing: the weather was as bad as it can get off north-eastern Brazil when disaster struck, a cumulo-nimbus storm cloud nearly twice the height of Everest with…
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Added by Simon Lane on June 7, 2009 at 4:00am —
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It is, as usual, late. Late for what? Late for nothing. I am hovering, gliding, dawdling in the middle of the Carioca night, awaiting the release and disquiet of dreaming. I washed up here a while ago and I am now as clean as a whistle. News? Don’t even think about it. There aren’t (or is it isn't?)any. A lot is happening but as the Americans say, it’s “same old, same old,” so no surprises. The sea hasn’t stopped yet, the waves are doing their job, they are like FedEx, on time every day, package…
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Added by Simon Lane on May 29, 2009 at 12:00am —
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